


Weakness

by Walutahanga



Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers
Genre: Backstory, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Imprisonment, Possession, Pre-Canon, Psychopaths In Love, Rituals, Separations, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:33:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1370692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rita and Zedd had a history before she was imprisoned in the space dumpster. It's not a nice one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weakness

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so be warned this is a very dark fic and there's definite (multiple) levels of rape going on toward the end. Zedd is not a nice guy. In any sense of the word.

Rita had been Zedd’s favorite concubine.

She had been the one to save him from the Zeo Crystal’s wrath, using her magic to hold his body together and force it into some hideous semblance of life. She had been the only woman to carry his seed to term following that terrible disfigurement. All his other concubines had miscarried or still-birthed, but Rita had used her magic to keep Zedd’s son within her womb until he could be born safely. Saving Zedd had ensured her favour, but Thrax’s birth had catapulted her from the hundreds of beautiful, dark-haired women filling Zedd’s harem to Empress in all but name.

She had razed a thousand worlds on Zedd’s command, carrying out his orders willingly and eagerly, outdoing even his highest expectations. Back then, she’d been a ruthless force bent on destruction. Her beauty had been matched only by her ambition; she’d burned with an inner fire of hate and malice. She had been _magnificent._

* * *

“Conquer Earth,” Zedd told her as she knelt before him in his throne room. Their son, Thrax, stood on Zedd’s right, careful to show none of his approval as this honor was bestowed upon his mother. 

“Yes, my lord,” Rita rasped in her smoky, seductive voice, eyelashes lowered.

“It will be dangerous," Zedd said. "Zordon has chosen earth as his stronghold. Defeating him will be hard.”

“I can do it, my lord. I will destroy this thorn in your side, and present Earth to you.”

 "You had better,” Zedd said with a hint of a warning, then added off-handedly: “Goldar will go with you. He will help you defeat Zordon.”

And to ensure her loyalty, though there was no need to say it. They both understood the rules of the game they played. Rita bowed her head.

“My deepest thanks, my lord.”

“One more thing.” Zedd reached out, touched her lip with his thumb. “Do this for me, and I will marry you.”

Shocked whispers traveled through the throne room. The male lords looked thoughtful, calculating. This marriage would further legitimize Thrax’s claim to the throne. A few of the female lords looked thwarted as their own chances of securing the throne vanished. The few concubines present looked horrified. The rise of an Empress might well mean an end to the harem and those who dwelt within it. It was doubtful that Rita would tolerate no rivals, even former ones.

Rita’s eyes lit up with calculating greed and she kissed Zedd’s ring.

“As you wish, my lord,” she said. “I shall return with Zordon’s head!”

“No need,” he said benevolently. “A hand or a finger will do as well.”

Her soft, delighted laughter sent a thrill down his spine. He thought at that moment he could perhaps come to have a glimmering of appreciation for the concept of love.

It would be the last he’d see of her for ten thousand years. 

* * *

After Rita’s defeat, Zedd spent a whole year on Earth.

He tried magic and chemistry and brute force, but the dumpster wouldn’t open. He’d once thought that being flayed alive by the Zeo crystal was the worst torment anyone could undergo. He now knew better. Having Rita so close, just out of reach, and being unable to get to her...  _this_ was true torment.

Thrax was the one to finally convince him to return to the Zedd Empire. His son could have used his absence to consolidate his own hold on the throne, and Zedd was both touched and disappointed that he hadn’t. Plainly he and Rita had invested too much affection in this son of theirs. Rita had an excuse; she was only a woman. But Zedd should have known better. He focused his attention on the throne, and the generals who’d grown too bold in his absence, and immersed himself in power struggles for millenia. 

He kept visiting Earth, though. Not often. Once every century or so when it drew close to the anniversary of Rita’s defeat and always quietly, discretely, wearing a human guise prepared by one of his senior concubines. Thus Zedd became an unintentional witness to human history, watching them develop from hunter gatherers to agriculture, and then progress with sudden leaps and bounds to technology.

It was towards the end of the twentieth century as humans measured time (and the end of Rita’s imprisonment, though he did not know it then) than he came to have a much closer encounter with humans.

He was walking through the streets of Angel Grove, the human city that had been raised over the ancient battlegrounds. It disgusted him. Zordon had been his greatest adversary and Zedd had respected him as much as he hated him. To see Zordon and Rita’s memory smothered in human dwellings made Zedd’s blood pressure rise. He longed to wipe it off the face of the earth.

He was seated on a park bench, weighing the pros and cons of creating a monster to set on the innocent passers by, when a young woman sat down beside him.

“Disgusting, isn’t it,” she said. “All these buildings and cars.”

“Yes.” Zedd agreed without thinking, her sentiment so exact a reflection of his own, he at first thought them nothing more than a continuation of his own thoughts. Then he realized the insolent little human had dared to address him. “Why are you talking to me?” He said. 

“I saw your expression. You’re as repelled by all this consumerist crap as I am.”

She was a tall woman with olive brown skin and high cheekbones. Her silky black waterfall of hair was held back from her face by a white hairband. She was, coincidentally enough, the exact kind of woman that Zedd filled his harem with. It was for that reason he didn't immediately break her fingers when she held out her hand with a friendly smile. 

“Samantha Trueheart. And you are?”

Zedd eyed her hand for a moment, before sliding his own into it.

“Hades.” He used on impulse one of the older names that humans had called him, ever since they were old enough to be aware of him.

She raised her eyebrows.

“Groovy. You into the revolution?”

“Revolution?” The ins and outs of human politics bored him, mostly because every cause he encountered now would be forgotten by the time he visited again.

“The revolution, man. The way people lived in the sixties, when people actually gave a damn. Sex, drugs, music. Live and let live, without that capitalist bullshit. Worship the mother goddess.”

Zedd had more or less tuned out until the last sentence.

“Mother goddess?” He said.

She beamed.

“You know, the moon mother. The center of female power.”

“Interesting.”

Indeed it was, because Rita had been imprisoned on earth’s moon. That old story had evolved over the generations, warped by ten thousand years of re-telling, until only a vague association existed between females and the moon. Some Earth civilizations had actually worshiped Rita: a practice he’d found almost as amusing as the discovery that they prayed to him as well in his guise as death-god, destruction incarnate.

“You know, we’ve got a summoning going on later on,” Samantha said. “If you’re into that.”

“Summoning?”

Samantha beamed again.

“It’s where we enter into a trance and ask the mother goddess to speak to us. It’s totally rad.”

The crude description reminded him suddenly of an ancient ritual once performed by Rita's worshipers. Zedd had used it infrequently over the millenia to communicate with Rita within her prison. When the religions that deified them had finally died out, so had the knowledge and Zedd had been too discouraged to torment them both further by trying to keep it alive. Why give them both hope? Better to let Rita sleep and be at peace. 

But it had been so long since he had spoken to her. Thousands of years in fact. Surely it was time and past to speak to her again, if only for a short while. 

Whatever ritual this silly child performed, Zedd felt certain he could twist it to his own ends. The spell only required that the human host offer themselves up willingly, though it was not overly strict on them completely understanding what they were offering themselves up _to_. Zedd considered Samantha's superficial resemblance to Rita, and decided that she would do very well indeed. 

He smiled at her.

“I would like to see this summoning very much.”

* * *

Samantha took him to a human dwelling where there were many women and a few men. It was nearly dark by then and the house was dimly lit with candles. Some humans sprawled on couches, others swayed near the music-playing devices. All of them were unkempt, even by human standards, and the smoke of hallucinogenic substances filled the air.

“Hey, everyone!” Samantha stood on a beaten up couch and waved her hands. “This is Hades! He’s gonna be joining us for the summoning tonight!”

Everyone greeted him with the enthusiasm of the mildly intoxicated and promptly forgot him all over again. Humans amused Zedd with their idiosyncrasies. The way Samantha described it, it was a religious gathering of deep spiritual significance, but all he saw was a group of humans abusing their senses.

“Don’t worry, it’ll pick up later on in the evening,” Samantha said, mistaking his quiet for disappointment. “Once we get past the summoning.”

She was gathering ingredients from the kitchen, drawing a circle on the lounge room carpet. Zedd noticed to his surprise that what she was doing appeared to be fairly accurate to the ritual he was familiar with. Plainly some knowledge of the old religions had survived, if incompletely. 

“Where did you learn this?” He asked. Samantha smiled, brushing her hair back from her face.

“My dad’s a shaman. He has no sons or nephews to learn his craft, so he taught me some stuff so it wouldn't be lost. ‘To pass onto my sons’.” She snorted. “Hell, no. I’m wishing for ten daughters and no son in sight.”

She completed her preparations and sat down. The others had began to gather, sitting in a circle around her. Zedd deigned to join them, watching with interest as they passed a bowl around, red smoke rising from it. He identified it as a mild relaxant, of the type used by human shaman to open up the mind to otherworldly influences. It’s effect on his system would be minimal at best.

In the middle of the circle, Samantha was sitting, cross-legged, eyes closed, hands resting on her denim-clad knees. The humans were chanting softly in some language that Zedd was unfamiliar with. He felt the pulse of energy pass through the circle, and realised with a slight surprise that Samantha must have some talent for magic. Inherited, no doubt, from her shaman father who had taught her just enough to put her in danger, but not enough to protect her. That had been very foolish of him. Were Zedd not here, Samantha might even have managed a brief moment of contact with Rita; a mere image or emotion. But Zedd _was_ here, and her father's mistake was his opportunity. 

Zedd poured power into the circle, ignoring Samatha’s gasp as the magic wrenched out of her grasp and took on older and darker permutations. She stiffened, head flung back, as the magic poured through her. To the untrained eye, she looked like she was in the middle of some drug-induced seizure.

When Samantha’s eyes opened, it was no insipid human behind their gaze. They fixed on Zedd, and her lips broadened into a smile of wicked glee.

“Zeddy!” She squealed. She flung her body – Samantha’s body – out of the meditative position and crawled into Zedd’s lap. The other humans found nothing unusual about this, already drunk on their toxic smoke, their senses dulled, minds distant. They laughed, someone made a crude comment, but they were beneath Zedd’s notice. He was taken up with the woman in his arms. Rita. His Rita, returned to him after an eternity without her. She kissed him deeply, and his hands rose to cradle her jaw, the silky weight of her hair. It was as if the millenia of power struggles melted away and he was once again that young warlord on a meteoric rise to power, untouched by loss or the weariness of unending power struggles. If he kept his eyes closed, he could imagine they were back at his fortress, Thrax only a room away...

Finally, too soon, Rita pulled back. Samantha’s face was filled with Rita’s confusion as her fingers touched his face.

“But why are you wearing this guise?” Rita asked. “This is not your face.”

“A convenience,” Zedd said. “To walk among the humans.”

“Humans.” Rita's ( _Samantha's_ ) lips curled in a sneer. “I have felt them, trying to reach me in my sleep. Few have managed so far.” Her disdain sent thrills through him, almost as arousing as the warm flesh pressing against him. Samantha had held some small appeal, but to know it was Rita inhabiting this vessel made her body close to irresistible. 

“Your prison is shut up tight,” Zedd agreed. It was disturbingly close to an apology, but he allowed it. Rita understood there were no apologies between them, just as there were no lies or deceit. In this regard they were of perfect accord. 

"Nevermind, my love," she said, open - alien - affection in the way she strokes back his hair. "I know you tried. It doesn't matter anyhow." She leaned in conspiratorially and whispered. “The walls are thinning. Soon I will walk more than the dream world. Soon I shall be free.”

“How soon?” Zedd demanded, his offence at her forgiveness overridden by his interest in this news. She shrugged.

“Twenty years. Less.”

Zedd nodded slowly, absorbing this information. It was good news, the best he’d had in centuries. The Zedd Empire was not as strong as it once was, and the return of a general as ruthless as Rita would be of great benefit to him. Of course she would need to rebuild her reputation, to show that a single defeat could not stop her achieving ultimate victory. Once she did that, he would be free to marry her as he had promised all those millenia ago. Thrax was gone of course - the thought still ached - but that would not stop them producing another heir to unite the two darkest strands of magic and help restore the Zedd Empire to its former glory... 

One of the humans laughed, interrupting Zedd's musings.

“Man, I don’t know what she’s on, but I’ll trade you my whole stash for a hit.”

 Zedd grabbed Rita’s ( _Samantha’s_ ) wrist and yanked her to her feet, careless of damage to her human vessel.

“In here.”

He dragged her into another room and shut the door. It was a human sleeping place, and they had some privacy here.

“Oh my dark lord,” Rita breathed, wrapping her arms about his neck. “I have missed you so much. Ten thousand years is far too long. But tell me of my family. Tell me of Rito, and Scorpina, and Thrax. How is Thrax? How is our son?”

The expressions were right, but the smell of her, the touch of her skin was all wrong. This was not his Rita, power trailing in her wake like a bewitching scent. It was a weak human vessel, and Zedd was repulsed. He unwound her arms from about his neck and took a step back.

 “Our son is gone,” he said harshly, not bothering to soften the blow. The smile faded from Rita’s face.

“But how?” She said, hand rising to cover her mouth. Tears filled Samantha’s big, dark eyes. _Human_ tears, and Zedd resisted the urge to strike her. She would never rule a galaxy with an attitude like that.  

“The Sentinal Knight,” he said roughly. “He imprisoned our son, the same way you were imprisoned.”

The disgusting grief in her eyes hardened into edges of diamond rage.

“The Sentinal Knight,” she hissed. “I hope you punished him.”

_That_ was his Rita. It must be the human vessel affecting her, making her take on human mannerisms. Zedd assured himself of this.

“His body is gone,” he said. “He drifts, much as Zordon does, powerless to affect the world, doomed to watch the consequences of his mistakes play out.”

“It is not enough,” she hissed. “You should have destroyed him.”

His fingers closed about her wrists, tightening almost to the point of shattering the fragile bone.

“That sounded like an order,” he said, and watched respect re-enter her eyes.

“My apologies, my Lord,” she said quickly. “I spoke without thinking. Please forgive my intolerable idiocy.”

He released her, and she rubbed her wrist.

“You will be free in twenty years,” he said. “I will return to earth then, and I will expect to see it under your thumb.”

Rita’s eyelashes fluttered and she said nervously:

“But my Lord, Zordon still watches over Earth. He has already defeated me once…”

“And now he is trapped within a timewarp. You will have the advantage, Rita Repulsa. I suggest you use it.”

He ignored the hurt in her eyes as he reminded her sharply of her place, addressing her as he would his lowest general. But apparently ten thousand years in a space dumpster had wrought a change in her, and he must make it clear that whatever leniency he once showed her did not extend to questioning his orders or methods. It was better he make the lesson sharp now so it need never be repeated.

“But – ”

“Your Lord has given you an order, Repulsa. When your Lord gives you an order, you obey. Be it impossible, you will _find a way_.”

She bowed her head.

“Yes, my Lord,” she said softly. She seemed sufficiently cowed. “My Lord, my hold on this vessel is failing. If there is anything else you wish to tell me…?”

It was an invitation for more, a subtle opening for him to throw her some small scrap of affection, some vague assurance that she was still his favorite concubine. Once he would have touched her chin or told her to fix her hair: a statement uninterpretable by anyone else, but having a whole realm of meaning between them. It was the only way they, two monsters, could express tenderness.

 He was tempted to give her the comfort she sought and was horrified at his own weakness. Had he truly once been so enslaved to her whims? To plan a future with a woman was one thing, but allow so much leeway was another matter entirely. Plainly it was time to remind them both of that. 

“Yes,” he said. “There is one more thing I require of you.”

He shoved her back onto the bed. Her eyes went wide as he kneed her legs apart.

He had no doubt that she would cooperate quite eagerly were he to suggest or seduce. This taking would leave her in no doubt as to what she is in his eyes: a warm body, a relatively useful tool that can easily be replaced. He mounted her angrily, hating the hurt in her eyes, and the small sounds of pain that she tried to disguise. His fingers curled about her throat with the vague intention of snapping the human’s neck at the moment of climax. It would not kill Rita, but it would hurt her and serve as a final message of his contempt. But his fingers do not squeeze. He cannot kill Rita, even by proxy.

Afterwards, Rita lay curled up on the bed, eyes closed. He ruthlessly restrained the urge to comfort her. If he was to force her back to her previous inhumane glory, he could not be soft or gentle. It would only encourage her to be the same and he had no use for weakness. She would thank him for it eventually. As he stood, her eyes opened, and it was not Rita anymore, but Samantha who stared at him with a very satisfying expression somewhere between horror and terror.

“What – what are you?” She said, and he realized she must have been aware of at least some of what passed between him and Rita.

“I told you,” Zedd said. “I’m Hades.” 

She scrambled backwards, clutching a sheet about her naked body as if she truly believed he could be tempted by such a sight. His only interest in her had been as a possible connection to Rita, and now that was over, she was less than nothing to him.

“Silly girl,” he sneered. “Did you imagine yourself Persephone descending into shadow? You’re nothing but a foolish child, dabbling in matters beyond your comprehension.”

She burst into tears, stifling her sobs into the sheet as she huddled as far away from him as possible. He considered killing her, but she wasn't really worth it. Nothing more than an insect really, crawling across the face of the earth. Within a hundred years she’d be dead and gone. Not even worth the effort it would take to lift his hand and finish her.

“The dark tide is coming, human,” he told her. “Remember, and be honored that you formed some small part of it.”

He departed the human dwelling, and reverted to his normal guise, the fragile illusion snapping and fraying like spider silk. Rita was returning. A short twenty years, and he would behold her again. The thought was intoxicating. But this time he would be careful. He would guard his heart. No tenderness would uncurl his fist, no love soften his voice. He would be as cruel and uncaring as the cold hard vacuum of space, and maybe then he would be able rid them both of this disgusting weakness once and for all.

He told himself that, as if eventually he would come to believe it.


End file.
